Within the framework of the Parallel Programme of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, the pop/off/art Gallery presents, for the first time at its own venue, the solo exhibition of Irina Nakhova. One of the leading representatives of Moscow Conceptualism, she is considered the first Russian artist to create “total installations”. Since 1989 she has had more than 30 solo exhibitions in the galleries and museums of Moscow, London, Barcelona, Salzburg, New York, Chicago and other cities in Europe and the USA.

Irina Nakhova’s interactive installation in the pop/off/art Gallery is a battlefield of copies of classical statues, whose movement will be controlled by the exhibition’s visitors. The participants in the battle are plastic casts made from monuments to Japanese and ancient Greek warriors, which represent, if looking at it ironically, the eternal struggle for cultural hegemony between the West and the East. During the game, the viewers, using a remote control, direct the moving copies of the original sculptures from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Like “referees” of the game, the casts of the original monuments, provided by one of Moscow’s museums, will stand high on pedestals. The battle will take place on a field without goals, rules and, therefore, without winners, which makes it pointless from the outset. According to the artist, “in the world of real conflicts that are provoked for no valid reason it is especially important to show the meaninglessness of battles in the face of all-conquering Time”. The installation will work in the interactive mode in sessions, for the remainder of the time it will be in a static “museum” mode.

This is not the first time that Irina Nakhova has used images of classical art in her work. Classical art, as the cradle of visual art in general, and the ways of its interaction with today’s world is what interests the artist and becomes the main reason for her referring to museum exhibits. For Nakhova “ancient art has always been truly alive”, that is why she has ventured to recreate the original idea of a work of art in this installation of battling sculptures: the warriors, frozen in time, are for the artist reminiscent of man’s games throughout the course of history. The artist raises the question of the role of the museum (as a comprehensive storehouse of time, culture and memory) in the contemporary world of confrontation between different cultures. According to the philosopher and culturologist Elena Petrovskaya, Irina Nakhova “brings new life to the museum” and its exhibits, which “acquire the status of works of art simply by the very fact of their appearance there”.

Irina Nakhova was born in 1955 in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. She is a representative of Moscow Conceptualism. Irina Nakhova is one of the first Russian artists who started making installations, creating in her flat a series of large-scale projects “Rooms” in the mid-1980s. In 2013 Nakhova was the winner of the Kandinsky Prize in the category “Project of the Year”, and in 2015 her works were exhibited in the Russian Pavilion at the 56th International Venice Biennale. In 2017 the InArt Project rated her in the top-5 acknowledged Russian artists. The artist’s last solo exhibition “Vzglyad” was held in 2016 in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Irina Nakhova’s works are in the collections of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, New Brunswick, USA; the Tate Modern, London; the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Centre for Contemporary Art, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the Cultural Foundation “Ekaterina”, Moscow. She lives in Moscow and New Jersey, USA.

REGINA Gallery presents the exhibition by Victor Alimpiev CENTIMETER: A COLOR SEGMENT OF DARKNESS QUANTIFIABLE ALGAE, ALSO KNOWN AS SMOKE. The latest works by the artists are included in the exhibition – a film and picturesque works.
Two-channel video CENTIMETER puts us in the space of a silent, but violent dispute. Two groups of girls alternately pass and receive – like a conductor and an orchestra – barely perceptible signals, sharp and powerful. The managing team merges in a synchronous sequence of movements into a single pointing organism, the controlled group reacts with a stern reaction, changing the rhythm of their movements from an almost noiseless whispering tramp to furious tap dancing.
The canvases, in turn, should be presented as targets, gently wounded by such signals – as two beautiful girls by signs of attention from those surrounding them, fixing them in the form of precise and irreversible images in the clouds of colored suspension opened between us and the picture of space.
It is the first personal project by Victor Alimpiev after his personal exhibition RADIANT that was held in 2015 in REGINA Gallery.

The exhibition at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is the first major survey of Takashi Murakami's work in Russia and will span several periods of the artist’s career from the mid-1990s to now.

Presenting his work in the broader context of Japanese culture for the first time, the exhibition pays homage to Murakami’s long-term project to creatively unite and question Eastern and Western traditions.

Consisting of five sections that each explore a particular phenomenon in Japanese culture which has been formally or semantically examined by Murakami, the show reveals the artist’s inquiries into the nuanced facets of Japanese culture and public consciousness, blurring the line between high and low culture while merging various media into one continuous flow of images.
The first section, Geijutsu (芸術, Learning and Technique), will focus on the genealogy of Murakami’s paintings and his ideas regarding the pictorial space and the artist’s craft. Having trained as a classical Nihonga painter, Murakami’s work is partly rooted in traditional Japanese painting, which is characterized by a certain flatness of image and what art historian Nobuo Tsuji (Lineage of Eccentrics: Matabei to Kuniyoshi, 2012) calls “eccentricity:” an expressionist aspect of the Japanese painterly tradition. This section also introduces a theme that will recur throughout the exhibition: the importance of daily routine and traditional labor, be it the making of engravings and paintings, ceramics, or sushi.

The second section, The Little Boy and the Fat Man (リトルボーイとファットマン), is a tribute to Murakami’s project Little Boy (2005), which explored the symbolism of August 1945 and the ways in which the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings transformed Japanese visual culture after the war. A disaster as a starting point for a new sensibility: from apocalyptic visions to a conscious escape from reality. This part of the exhibition will focus on visual rhymes between the works of Murakami, anime and manga, and historical documentation. The exhibition at Garage will be the first in Europe to include one of Murakami’s earliest installations, Sea Breeze (1992), an extraordinary work that examines the events of August 1945 and is part of the collection of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan).

The third section, Kawaii (カワイイ), will explore the intersections between Murakami’s work and the aesthetics of kawaii (cuteness), which is an integral part of contemporary Japanese culture. This part of the exhibition will include manga and anime featuring world-famous characters (Pokémon, Hello Kitty); various environments (such as a mirror zone with toys); a screening room showing Murakami’s 2013 feature film Jellyfish Eyes; and a space exhibiting the preparatory models for the film’s animated characters.

The fourth section, Sutajito (スタジオ), will examine the structure of Murakami’s studio. The exhibition will include a recreation of part of his “factory,” in which the artist’s assistants will work during the installation of the exhibition. This section will present the history of Murakami’s studio and of the production of a number of works through the use of archive materials. It will also include a board with the names, photographs, and work schedule of the installation team. The “wet studio” will provide a space for young Russian artists to learn Murakami’s painting techniques.

The “phantom chapter,” Asobi & Kazari (遊び & 飾り), will be spread across the Museum’s non-exhibition spaces, demonstrating the playful aspect of Murakami’s work and his interest in decoration and patterns which are rooted in the Japanese artistic tradition. These parasite ornaments invading the Museum space will create a transition from the exhibition to the world of Kaikai Kiki (the art production and art management corporation founded by Murakami in 1996), which will occupy the Café and Bookshop and continue onto the facade of the building.

The exhibition at Garage will include more than eighty paintings, drawings, and films by Murakami from the collections of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and private collections. The exhibition also includes traditional Japanese engravings and paintings from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, examples of manga and anime, and various artifacts from Murakami's studio.

A Russian-language catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition, the first comprehensive publication on the artist in Russian.

Takashi Murakami's exhibition Under the Radiation Falls will take place as part of The Year of Japan in Russia.
The exhibition is curated by Katya Inozemtseva, Senior Curator of Garage.

In September 2017 the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin with the support of Sberbank will present an exhibition of one of the most famous contemporary artists Tsaya Gottsyan - his first solo exhibition in Russia. The main exposition areas of the Museum will turn into a gigantic installation “October”, reflecting the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution.
In the exhibition, designed to acquaint the Russian and international viewers with the art of the world-recognized artist, all the variety of strategies and methods that Tsai Guoqiang uses in his art practice will be presented.

You enter the subway car and see girls sitting, even and smooth, buns to buns. While these ones recline and sprawl, their goods and chattels hanging, and think about politics.

Stella Art Foundation presents the third part of the “triad” of projects put on show by the Artistic co-op Cupid on the Foundation’s premises (the second part of the project was on show in 2011-2012). The first part, Show and Tell. Artists and his Model. Still Waters Run Deep, was shown in the autumn of 2009, the second part, Metamorpheus, from December 2011 to February 2012. The current, third and final, part is again very different from the previous ones, demonstrating the inexhaustible inventiveness of the Association members, Yuri Albert, Viktor Skersis and Andrei Philippov.

Artists of the group say: “All our projects are based on the ‘swan, pike and crawfish’ principle: we make incompatible models of art and different ways of understanding art collide in one installation. Such a collision produces new meanings that may have been absent from our individual works. In the new exhibition we used the metaphor of art as a subway system, where artistic ideas rush with incredible speed, jumping from one line of artistic movements and trends to another. The exhibition is structured as a connection hub, a station where one can cross over from one understanding of art to another. Ideas of the co-authors, who are also the station masters, through their collisions and transformations, change themselves, much like particles in a booster, into new, yet unseen elements. On the other hand, this process could also be perceived as a Purgatory: some ideas end up in the paradise of the museum, while others are forgotten.”

Without disclosing details of the numerous amusement rides prepared by “Cupids” for the public, we can only say them that their subway is something like a well-knit multi-versum, an aggregate of small worlds embedded in an integrated exhibition space. This plurality, one would imagine, is what is produced by the operation of the “swan, pike and crawfish principle” professed by the artists. It manifests itself not only in the group authorship of the Cupid association or the bizarre space of its installation, but also in the organization of each and every exhibit. Artists use as their “raw material” all sorts of familiar objects that, after they end up in the installation environment, mutate into something incomprehensible, not readily comprehensible or comprehensible but absolutely surprising in its hybrid form.

We could also put differently: one can move from one world to another of this last version of Cupids’ multi-universe not only by physically moving along the installation. As soon as you take a look at any of the objects filling it, you immediately find yourself at a different place from the one you had just occupied. First you had an impression there was a swan in front of you, but it soon becomes clear that the swan is also a crawfish, and an even closer look shows you that it is also a pike into the bargain. So, anyone can easily see that Moscow conceptualism of today is not only “work with language,” but also work with the entire world. And actually even this world is not enough.

The key series presented at the exhibition is called «The World of Fashion Designers» and was created by Périer in the 1990’s. It includes photographs of the famous designers Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Kenzō Takada and has been produced for the ELLE magazine. This series of photographs best exemplifies the amazing attention the author shows to detail. Jean-Marie displays the meticulous eye of a couturier while forming every image and creating an ingenious portraiture collection.

More than forty works of the author will be presented at the exhibition, many are considered the iconic images of the era. The exposition will include photographs of the different periods starting from the first stages of Périer`s professional life when he worked at the popular French magazine Salut les Copains, which was dedicated to the musical youth culture of the 1960’s and the shoots of the legendary Beatles and Rolling Stones in the first years of their explosive rise in popularity. In the 1960’s Périer met and photographed the Beatles on numerous occasions while working for Salut les Copains. In 1966 Jean-Marie had been asked to create various images for the Beatles album covers and one of them is the famous photograph for the singles, Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever, which is included to the exposition.

Many celebrities of the international cinema scene posed in front of Périer`s camera. Among his works are portraits of Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Benicio del Toro, Monica Bellucci, Natalie Portman to mention a few. Among his accomplishments, Jean-Marie shifted from photography to the directional role in cinema and authored a number of documentaries and TV series. Additionally, authoring story films such as «Antoine et Sébastien» (1974) starring François Périer and «Sale rêveur» (1978) with Jacques Dutronc and Lea Massari.

September 21 at 19:00 the exhibition will be opened by Jean-Marie Périer. There will be a chance to meet with the author and ask him questions. Jean-Marie will be available for interviews from 21st to 23th of September.

The exhibition tours and lectures will accompany the exhibition «Jean-Marie Périer. Couturier of the French Photography». For the updates please check the website of the Center for Photography www.lumiere.ru.

Sebastian Copeland Pure Arctic by Sebastian Copeland

Sep 22, 2017 - Jan 7, 2018

The Lumiere Brothers Center presents the exhibition of the famous photographer, polar explorer and environmental activist Sebastian Copeland

As part of the 2017 Year of Ecology in Russia, The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography is presenting the first Russian exhibition of the famous photographer, polar explorer and environmental activist Sebastian Copeland. The exhibition, one of Copeland’s most comprehensive retrospectives, features around fifty large-format photographs taken over the last ten years during expeditions to the Polar Regions of Norway, Canada, the USA, Greenland, across the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Ever since photography began, it has served as a tool for spreading knowledge about the world. Before the arrival of transport and means of communication, it allowed people to see the most remote places on Earth. Surprising as it may seem, even today photographers often assume the role of visual pioneers, not only by discovering the world, but also by addressing topical issues. The exhibition at the Center for Photography traces Copeland’s journeys to both the North and South Poles, focusing on the photographer’s most extensive Arctic series, to which he dedicated over 10 years of travelling. Copeland’s grandiose icy “canvases”, distant and poetic, are an extraordinary example of polar photography.

“As with landscape photography, the Arctic’s visual payoff is commensurate with the time invested there. For visitors like me seeking immersive experiences, the ice can be especially rewarding when everything lines up. The dominance of water, in either frozen or liquid form, and the sun’s low angle makes for a limited color spectrum; while the stripped down landscape imposes focus. Visually, clouds and ice are kindred spirits: heavy skies and low contrast extract the best of the blues, and ice will acquire an iridescence that is unique to polar photography,” said Copeland, describing the particular conditions of shooting in the Arctic.

Aside from exposing the austere and fragile beauty of the pristine nature of the Polar Regions, Sebastian Copeland’s photographs also have a pragmatic aim – to use the art of photography to raise awareness of climate change on the planet and to campaign for a sustainable future: “Helping people fall in love with their world is a catalyst to wanting to save it”. The melting of glaciers and thinning of the ice sheet in the Arctic and the Antarctic is happening faster than anywhere else on the Earth, and this is a clear sign of the changing climate. “What happens in the Arctic, doesn’t stay in the Arctic!” Copeland points out. Being an environmental activist since 1999, he has spoken at the UN and at international conferences around the world; he is on the Board of Directors of Global Green (the US arm of NGO environmental organization Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev). In the foreword to Copeland’s book on Antarctica, Mikhail Gorbachev writes: “It is in this essence of hopefulness that Antarctica: The Global Warning came to life. It depicts the ephemeral and austere beauty of Antarctica through stunning photographs of the largest remaining wilderness on Earth”.

Copeland has travelled a total of almost 8000 kilometers on his journeys to the coldest regions of the world. He took part in several Arctic expeditions in 2005, 2008 and 2010 and led a team of nine young people to the northernmost Canadian Arctic as “Young Ambassadors of the Arctic”. In 2009, he repeated Robert Edwin Peary’s 700-kilometer journey (1909) on foot to the geographical North Pole, which is considered one of the most difficult routes in the world. In 2010, he spent 43 days crossing the Greenland ice sheet using skis and kites, travelling a distance of 2300 kilometers. He spent the seasons of 2006 and 2007 aboard a scientific research icebreaker in the Antarctic Peninsula, and during the winter of 2011-2012 he led the East/West transcontinental crossing of Antarctica on skies and kites, setting three world records over 4100 kilometers.

In addition to the photographs, unique video footage from the expeditions will also be shown at the exhibition, as well as Copeland’s feature-length documentaries: Into the Cold: The Journey of the Soul (2010) (selected by the Tribeca Film Festival, winner of the Indie Spirit Film Festival and the Los Angeles Reel Film festival) and Across the Ice (2015), which was a finalist at many international festivals.

Sebastian Copeland will also give an artist’s talk at The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography and will present his two famous books: Arctic: The Vanishing North, Best Book at the Global Arctic Awards (2016), Tokyo International Photography Awards (2016), ITB Book Awards (2016) and Antarctica: The Global Warning, for which he was awarded the title of Best Professional Photographer of the Year at the International Photography Awards, IPA (2007).

Since its very beginning, photography has been serving as an instrument of dissemination of knowledge about the world. Anticipating transport and communication facilities, it showed people the most remote places of the globe. Surprising as it may seem, even today a photographer oftentimes take on a role of a visual pioneer not only by discovering the world, but also by raising topical issues of the time. The exhibition at the Center for Photography traces Sebastian Copeland’s journeys to both North and South Poles focusing on the photographer’s most extensive Arctic series, which took him over 10 years of travel. Copeland’s grandiose icy “canvases”, distant and poetic, represent an extraordinary example of polar photography.

This is how the photographer speaks about the peculiarities of shooting in the Arctic: “As with landscape photography, the Arctic’s visual payoff is commensurate with the time invested there. For visitors like me seeking immersive experiences, the ice can be especially rewarding when everything lines up. The dominance of water, in either frozen or liquid form, and the sun’s low angle makes for a limited color spectrum; while the stripped-down landscape imposes focus. Visually, clouds and ice are kindred spirits: heavy skies and low contrast extract the best of the blues, and ice will acquire an iridescence that is unique to polar photography”.
Revealing austere and fragile beauty of pristine nature of Polar Regions, Sebastian Copeland’s photographs pursue also pragmatic purposes - to draw attention to climate change on the planet and to call for sustainable future by means of the art of photography: “Helping people fall in love with their world is a catalyst to wanting to save it”. Melting of glaciers and thinning of the ice sheet in the Arctic and the Antarctic are happening faster than anywhere else on the Earth, and serve as the key indicators of the changing climate. “What happens in the Arctic, doesn’t stay in the Arctic!” – Copeland points out. Being an environmental activist since 1999, he has spoken at the UN and at international conferences around the world; he is on the Board of Directors of Global Green (the US arm of NGO environmental organization Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev). In the foreword to Copeland’s book on Antarctica Mikhail Gorbachev writes: “It is in this essence of hopefulness that Antarctica: The Global Warning came into life. It depicts ephemeral and austere beauty of Antarctica through stunning photographs of the largest remaining wilderness on Earth”.

Copeland’s journeys to the coldest regions of the world make almost 8,000 kilometers. In the Arctic in 2005, 2008 and 2010 he participated in several expeditions and led a team of nine children to the northernmost Canadian Arctic as “Young Ambassadors of the Arctic”. In 2009, he repeated Robert Edwin Peary’s foot journey of 700 kilometers to the geographical North Pole (1909), considered one of the most difficult routes in the world. In 2010, he spent 43 day crossing the Greenland ice sheet using skis and kites, which made 2300 kilometers. The seasons of 2006 and 2007 he spent aboard a scientific research icebreaker in the Antarctic Peninsula, and during the winter of 2011-2012 he led East/West transcontinental crossing of Antarctica on skies and kites, setting three world records over 4100 kilometers.

Apart from photography, the unique video footage of the course of the expeditions will be featured at the exhibition. As part of parallel program Sebastian Copeland’s full-length documentaries will be shown: Into the Cold: The Journey of the Soul (2010) (selected by Tribeca Film Festival, won at the Indie Spirit Film Festival and at Los Angeles Reel Film festival) and film-finalist of many international festivals Across the Ice (2015).

Sebastian Copeland will also give an artist’s talk at The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography and will present his two famous books: «Arctic: The Vanishing North», acknowledged best by Global Arctic Awards (2016), Tokyo International Photography Awards (2016), ITB Book Awards (2016) and “Antarctica: The Global Warning”, that earned him, among others, the title of the best professional photographer of the year according to the International Photography Awards, IPA (2007).

The main project of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art Clouds⇄Forests will take place in New Tretyakov Gallery (The State Tretyakov Gallery, 10, Krymsky Val, Moscow) from September 19, 2017 to January 18, 2018. It will last for four months for the first time in the history of the Moscow Biennale.

The curator of the 7th Moscow Biennale is Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts. The project Clouds⇄Forests focuses on a new eco-system formed through a circulation of “Cloud Tribes,” who were born on the Internet cloud space, and “Forest Tribes” who are born on cultural origins. The works of the artists of the main project will be displayed in a dialogue with works from the permanent exhibition of The State Tretyakov Gallery.

Yuko Hasegawa, curator of the main project:
“Clouds⇄Forests focuses on artists as a creative tribe transitioning, expanding and dissipating, from forest to cloud, rebuilding the subjectivity of spectators and showing that creativity is vital to the creation of new environmental spheres. Taking into account perceptions on the generation of new subjective environmental spheres, the curatorial criteria for this exhibition includes giving life to new technologies as well as exploring ways to obtain animistic artistic languages and connect cultural roots, and leveraging the rhizome-based organic system to traverse history, genres, and media.”

The main project of the 7th Moscow Biennale includes works of such well-known artists as Matthew Barney, Olafur Eliasson and Björk. The full list of the participants is here.

From this year, the Moscow Biennale has the Expert Council, which includes the heads of leading Russian museums, independent curators and representatives of non-profit foundations—Mikhail Piotrovsky (Director of the State Hermitage Museum), Zelfira Tregulova (Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery), Olga Sviblova (Director of Multimedia Art Museum), Vasily Tsereteli (Executive Director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art), Andrey Erofeyev (Co-Chairman of the Russian Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA); curator), Alexander Rytov (Director of Stella Art Foundation) and others. The Expert Council takes all creative decisions.

Starting from this year, the Moscow Biennale introduced a system for presenting Russian artists to an international curator. The curator Yuko Hasegawa received over 600 applications from Russian artists and more than 100 recommendations from the Expert Council, museums and non-profit foundations. As a result, the following artists were selected to participate in the main project: Alexey Martins, Anastasia Potemkina, Valya Fetisov, Dashi Namdakov, Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov and the creative association “Where Dogs Run.” They will create new works specifically for the 7th Moscow Biennale. In addition, the curator has selected works by Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubodsarsky, Alina Gutkina and Mikhail Tolmachev from Gazprombank’s contemporary Russian art collection.

The Expert Council of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art selected 69 projects for the parallel program of the Biennale with 49 institutions participating. For the first time the parallel program introduces many different types of institutions—from big museums to small workshops and galleries. The parallel program includes: Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (MAMM), the center of contemporary art “Winzavod,” VDNKh, creative association XOLST, Darwin Museum, Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow State University Botanical Garden “Aptekarsky Ogorod” and others.

The Moscow Biennale has for the first time actually become a single unified project. One of the things that brings it together is a mobile application, a digital guide—a joint project of the Moscow Biennale and Yandex—that maps and covers the main project of the Biennale and the parallel program throughout the city of Moscow, including navigation and audio guide to every exhibition. The goal of the application is to enable people to find out about the Moscow Biennale, obtain information on the specific projects taking place nearby and gain a detailed idea of what they will see.

The 7th Moscow Biennale will be accompanied by a series of special events, including meetings with artists, lectures and discussions. The Moscow Biennale also prepared separately a big kid’s programme, which will make it possible to come to the Moscow Biennale with the entire family.